A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Hulu of illegally sharing users' viewing history with Facebook and business metrics company comScore. US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler rejected Hulu's argument that viewers needed to show actual injury to recover damages.

The case hinges on the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which was adopted after a newspaper published an article in 1987 about movies that Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork had rented. Hulu had argued that the law "was not adopted to impose multi-billion dollar liability on the transmission of anonymous data where no one suffers any actual injury."

Beeler said that the statute requires only injury in the form of a wrongful disclosure before damages might be available so the case will have to go ahead. The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of Hulu users nationwide. It was brought by several people in California, Illinois and New York seeking damages of at least $2,500 per violation, plus punitive damages and other sums.

These plaintiffs claimed that Hulu let third parties engaged in marketing, advertising, and social networking track their video choices without permission.

Yahoo is joining the bidders for Hulu, just a week after announcing that it is spending $1.1 billion for the blogging service Tumblr.

It now joins rival bidders for Hulu, including Time Warner Cable Inc, DirecTV, former News Corp president Peter Chernin and Guggenheim Digital Media. Hulu could be worth as much as $1 billion to $2 billion. At least five bidders have emerged for the five-year-old video service with 4 million users, potentially setting up a bidding competition.

Hulu, which generated revenues of around $700 million last year, streams TV shows online in similar fashion to Netflix. Yahoo has gone on an acquisition spree to bring in talent as well as beef up its mobile and online products and content, as CEO Marissa Mayer tries to revive a once-dominant Internet icon that has for years lost users.

When Hulu Plus arrives on your Xbox 360 today, 360 owners will be excited to learn that they will be able to sample Hulu Plus for free till May 6th. The free Hulu Plus trial will be available to both Silver and Gold Xbox Live members.

The free trial of Hulu Plus is being sponsored in part by Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, according to our sources. The Xbox 360 Hulu Plus interface, as we told you, is very much like the Netflix interface; and we have been told that it will offer Kinect support right from the start.

If you like it and want to keep it after the trial, it will cost you $7.99 per month. Until we have had more of a chance to compare it with Netflix, it is hard to say which the better $7.99 per month streaming option is. Rest assured, we will dig into it and let you know our thoughts, because who can pass up a free trial these days?

As we reported recently, Sony announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to get access to Hulu Plus for an additional $9.99 per month. The Hulu service on PS3 is live now, beating Microsoft to the punch.

Apparently, the caveat that it is only for PlayStation Plus subscribers will be dropped at some point in the future, but it will still cost users an additional $9.99 per month. While the access to Hulu Plus is being currently described as a preview, those wanting in will have to download the Hulu Plus application and then request an invite to the preview.

It was originally thought that Hulu Plus would arrive first for Xbox 360 owners, but Hulu then announced that it would arrive on the PS3 first with an Xbox 360 offering in early 2011. Sources tell us that Microsoft is working with the Hulu folks by spending extra time to get the application to better integrate with the dashboard and provide a look and feel that is similar to existing applications for the dashboard, which we believe means closer to the current Netflix application for the Xbox 360.

Prior to E3 our sources were all in a chatter about Hulu launching a premium service that would include support for the Xbox 360. The premium service will be a $9.99 per month premium subscription-based offering and is now being referred to by our sources as Hulu Plus.

From what we are told by our sources, apparently Hulu has a deal in place with Sony, as well, to add Hulu Plus support to the PlayStation 3 platform. From what we now understand, the deal with Microsoft was pretty much in place, but some foot dragging caused the announcement not to be made at E3 as originally intended.

Apparently, the clock is ticking for Hulu to get the premium service up and running. Whispers suggest that some licensing agreements with some content providers are set to expire in 2011, and Hulu needs to show positive revenue growth and expansion to content providers if they are to stay with Hulu.

Many analysts believe that Hulu Plus could represent the best chance for the company to grab a larger slice of the streaming market while it still is very new and ripe for the picking. Having support for two of the three major console platforms will be quite important going forward when content providers choose who they will partner with.